Opioids

The Lake County Health Department/Community Health Center and Lake County officials on Tuesday honored a pharmaceutical company for a second donation of a drug administered by law enforcement that has already assisted in saving 33 lives throughout Lake County. Virginia-based kaléo is matching last year’s donation of 3,000 kits of EVZIO (naloxone HCI injection), to the Health Department. Each kit contains two single-dose EVZIO auto-injectors containing the drug naloxone and a trainer for practice. In […]

Ann Arbor, MI – More than 10 percent of children have illegally used another individual’s prescription medication, and an increasing number are doing so at a younger age, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. Researchers analyzed data of more than 5,000 Detroit-area students and found the number of children illegally taking prescription drugs at a younger age has more than doubled over a 10-year period. Of children born between 1991 and […]

More than 4 million Americans admit they have driven while intoxicated at least once in the past month, a new government study finds. The typical drunk driver is a young male with a history of binge drinking. About 4.2 million people—close to 2 percent of American adults—admitted to driving drunk in the prior month, HealthDay reports. Alcohol-impaired driving crashes account for about one-third of all U.S. crash deaths in the past two decades, according to […]

Forty-five percent of Americans who use opioid prescription painkillers do not realize they are taking an opioid, or that the drug is just as addictive as heroin, according to a National Safety Councilsurvey. In fact, opioid painkillers and heroin have nearly identical chemical makeups and produce the same effects. Drug overdoses, largely from opioid painkillers, are a leading cause of unintentional injury death for American adults. The epidemic is a primary focus of National Safety Month, observed […]

Infographic by CDC In 2012 health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers — equaling a bottle of pills per American adult —according to data released by the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention on Tuesday. CDC Director Tom Frieden said in the agency’s July Vital Signs telebriefing that in this past decade, the number of prescriptions written have increased by 400 percent. With the surge in painkiller prescriptions, the U.S. has […]

The Partnership at Drugfree.org, a national nonprofit working to find evidence-based solutions to adolescent substance use, today launched a comprehensive new digital resource that helps parents better understand the potential life-saving benefits of medication-assisted treatment. The advanced online tool is comprised of videos, testimonials and an e-book to help parents make an informed choice when they are looking for treatment options to help a teen or young adult recover from an addiction to prescription pain […]

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” goes the playground rhyme that’s supposed to help children endure taunts from classmates. But a new study suggests that there’s more going on inside our brains when someone snubs us – and that the brain may have its own way of easing social pain. The findings, recently published in Molecular Psychiatry by a University of Michigan Medical School team, show that the […]

Abusing prescription opioid pain relievers is a major problem among young people, and a new study shows users are combining those drugs with other substances. In data from the annual Monitoring the Future survey for the years 2002-2006, 1 out of 8 high school seniors reported having used prescription opioids nonmedically; 7 out of 10 nonmedical users reported combining prescription opioids with at least one other substance in the past year. Marijuana and alcohol were […]

Stimulants Contributing to Sustained Rx Epidemic New, nationally projectable survey results released today by The Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation confirmed that one in four teens has misused or abused a prescription (Rx) drug at least once in their lifetime – a 33 percent increase over the past five years. The Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) also found troubling data on teen misuse or abuse of prescription stimulants. One in eight teens (13 percent) […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified prescription drug abuse as an epidemic. While there has been a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that nearly one-third of people aged 12 and over who used drugs for the first time in 2009 began by using a prescription drug non-medically.Some individuals who misuse prescription drugs, particularly teens, believe […]

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In December 2011, Join Together published a commentary entitled “Legalization of Marijuana and the Impact on Children.” The article stressed that future laws legalizing marijuana use should have strict provisions designed to prevent underage consumption. [...]

Teens who drink heavily appear to have significant abnormalities in brain development, a new study finds. Heavy drinking by teens may also be associated with a gene mutation linked to impulsiveness, according to another new [...]

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